Alexander Chalmers

Today's post will provide some background on the hugely prolific editor Alexander Chalmers.  Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will provide links to Chalmers' editions of 1805 and 1811, with some examples of the Fuseli illustrations contained therein.

Alexander Chalmers was born at Aberdeen in 1759 and received a classical and medical education.  He obtained a position as surgeon in the West Indies, and was on his way to join his ship, "when he suddenly altered his mind and proceeded to London, where he soon became connected with the periodical press" (DNB, Stephen, p. 444).  He began by editing newspapers, eventually becoming the editor of the Morning Chronicle.  He became further connected with the publishing business, and became a prolific editor of books.  As the DNB says of him, "No man ever edited so many works as Chalmers for the booksellers of London."  In addition to his Shakespeare (1805) Chalmers edited a staggering number of volumes from a wide array of authors.  He edited several editions of A Continuation of the History of England (1793-1821), Barclay's Complete and Universal English Dictionary, an edition of The British Essayists, which ran to 45 volumes (from The Tatler to The Observer), he added lives to the works of Burns and Beattie (1805), brought out an edition of Fielding's works in 10 volumes (1806), an edition of Warton's Essays (1806), a special edition of The Tatler, Spectator and Guardian in 14 volumes (1806), an edition of Gibbon's History with a life of the author in 12 volumes (1807), Prefaces to most of the works in the 45-volume Walker's Classics, Bolingbroke's Works in 8 volumes (1809), he contributed lives to the British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits (2 volumes, 1809-1816), edited an enlarged version of Johnson's Collection of the English Poets in 21 volumes (1810), a History of Oxford buildings, 1810, The Projector, a collection of essays gathered from the Gentleman's Magazine, in 3 volumes in 1811, a collection of  the biographies of various English worthies in 2 volumes in 1816, the Ninth edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson in 1822, another edition of Dr. Johnson's Works in 1823, another edition of Shakespeare in 1823 [I have been unable to locate this edition on the Internet and it is not described in Murphy's Shakespeare in Print].  Chalmers was also an active contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, but "the work on which his fame as a biographer chiefly rests" is the New and General Biographical Dictionary, first published in 1761, with several later editions.  Chalmers' edition first appeared in 1812 and in subsequent years, under the title The General Biographical Dictionary: "the total number of articles exceeded 9,000," many new, and all revised, a prodigious labor. 

Just two years after Isaac Reed brought out his "first variorum edition" of Shakespeare, further expanding upon the text of the 1793 Steevens edition (Reed's edition was also known as the "fifth edition" of the Steevens-Johnson text, issued in twenty-one volumes (!)), Alexander Chalmers brought out his own edition of Shakespeare.  It is an early reaction, presaging Singer's later edition, to the expansive notes of the Reed (and previous Steevens) editions.  In its Preface Chalmers asserts that "It is the first attempt that has been made to concentrate the information given in the copious notes of the various commentators within a moderate space, and with an attention rather to their conclusions than to their premises."  Further, lest the potential buyer miss the point, he states that "He [Chalmers, the editor] can only say that in the whole progress of his labours, he endeavoured to place himself in the situation of one who desires to understand his author at the smallest expence of time and thought, and who does not wish to have his attention diverted from a beauty, to be distracted by a contest."  Though Chalmers makes these protestations, you will notice that the notes are still occupy a fairly significant portion of space in his edition compared with later nineteenth century editions.